“Randall Colville, ma’am,” he said. Szgranian clan mistresses were supposed to be sharp, but most human passengers wouldn’t have been able to identify the rank markings on an officer’s uniform. “Third Officer, Staff Side.”
Lady Scour waved a hand before her face in a place-holding gesture, a sort of physical throat clearing. Close up, the six-armed torso was odd but not unpleasant to view. Her pale green tunic clung to her bosom. Bosoms.
Her eyes focused back on Ran. “Oh promise me now Clerk Colville,” she sang in a high, clear voice, “or ’twill cost ye muckle strife—”
How had she known that old Terran ballad? But Ran knew it, knew it well from the loot his father brought back from the Long Troubles on Hobilo.
“Ride never by the Wells of Slane, if you would live and brook your life.”
“Now speak no more my lusty dame,” Ran sang back to her, and nobody’d ever claimed he had a singing voice, but you did what you had to do. “Now speak no more of that to me.
“Did I never see a fair woman but I would sin with her body?”
Both of them began laughing with an enthusiasm that must have sounded mad to onlookers; but the onlookers hadn’t been in the dance, and the bond from that short ritual—an interlude from the harvest festival—was surprising.
“You knew the song!” Lady Scour said. “I’ve found that your people never know your own songs.”
Ran shrugged. “Well, there’s a lot of history,” he said, a diplomatic answer. “How did you happen to know it?”
Szgranian civilization had reached its present level long before humans began raising megaliths, much less pyramids. Szgrane hadn’t changed since then, however, until contact with human starfarers forced the static society to adapt.
The clan mistress smiled. “The same way you know The Dance of the Grubs Building Their Cocoon,” she said. “When I learned one of the officers on the ship that would carry me was named Colville, I learned about Colvilles.”
The smile brightened. “Are you like your ancestor, then?” Lady Scour added.
“I don’t know about ancestor . . . .” Ran said. One of the Szgranian attendants offered him a tiny tumbler of carved glass, Szgranian workmanship and worth the price of First Class passage on the Empress. Lady Scour drank from another, making the contents last for three minuscule sips.
Ran carefully touched the liquid with his tongue. It was chilled water, poured from one of the muff-like portmanteaus all the attendants carried.
“As I say,” Ran resumed, “I don’t claim the relationship . . . but it’s been suggested that I like, ah, fair women, yes.”
For Clerk Colville had indeed gone to see the lady, mermaid rather, at the Wells of Slane; not the last man to go where his pecker led, nor the last to get in trouble for it
The orchestra resumed playing. A circle of onlookers surrounded Ran and the Szgranians at a respectful distance. Lady Scour was a sight to be remarked on under any circumstances, and the bi-specific dance made that true in spades.
If Lady Scour had researched “Colville,” with Ran only assigned to the Empress of Earth seventy-two hours before undocking, then she’d certainly done the same with the names of all the other officers aboard the starliner. There wasn’t anything unusual about that performance. Szgranian nobility had virtually nothing to do except consider literature, genealogy, and honor. From what the hypnogogue had “told” Ran, a decision about the garments to be worn to a festival could absorb days of a court’s discussion.
“I’m interested that you used only the upper-arms motions in the Cocoon Dance,” Lady Scour said.
Her four attendants fluttered their multiple hands in front of their faces. Flowing sleeves made the attendants’ gestures look like the display behavior of butterflies.
“Well, ma’am,” Ran said. “I’m, ah, brachially challenged.” He spread his two hands, emphasizing the obvious. “Frankly, the hypnogogue must have done the best it could with what was available. I didn’t have a lot of conscious input.”
Lady Scour trilled another long laugh. She reached out with her upper pair of arms and touched her index fingers to Ran’s. “So you didn’t understand the significance of upper-arm gestures alone?” she asked.